Things are in the limelight. Fresh in the wake of TAG US where the plenary session was focused on the Future of Things, two announcements came through the CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory) listserv this past week for thing-oriented conferences/sessions. CHAT 2009 and What’s the ‘Matter’ in Anthropology, both set in Oxford, are taking up the call for things. This is a refreshing state of affairs.
The call to take things seriously has been an important agenda at the heart of what has been called a symmetrical archaeology (González-Ruibal 2007; Olsen 2007; Shanks 2007; Webmoor 2007; Witmore 2007).
Symmetry is an awkward term. It is part of an admittedly poor, but necessary, vocabulary meant to help us move from a very problematic rendering of reality to a hopefully more refreshing and interesting one. The “symmetrical” is simply meant to remind us not to assume the nature of relations between, for example, boundary cairns, arbitration inscriptions, and the governance of Greek poleis by imposing an asymmetric scheme based upon a discord between intentional social players and objective matter.
This is not to say asymmetries don’t exist. There are after all winners and losers throughout history. It is simply to say the asymmetries are not to be oriented along any preformed opposition between humans and nonhumans. This move requires hard work, much of which is yet to be accomplished. Here, it is important to note that significant work is already occurring in many areas across archaeology (see, for example, the contributions to Edgeworth 2006; Jorge and Thomas 2007; Knappett and Malafouris 2008).
As to be expected, many quibbles have been raised with the “symmetrical” agenda. I would like us to address two of these here: 1) the question of disciplinary commitment with respect to theory and; 2) reactions to the rhetorical subtext “the discipline of things”. These cavils were raised at TAG US and in one of the many interesting abstracts from the upcoming Centenary Conference of the Oxford University Anthropological Society, What’s the ‘Matter’ in Anthropology; both criticisms rest upon some basic misunderstandings.

While, to be sure, much of the work indicative of a so-called “symmetrical archaeology” is to be found in the fields associated with science and technology studies, it is also unabashedly built upon what archaeologists have always been doing. Just as much inspiration is to be found in the work of practitioners ranging from Lewis Binford to André Leroi-Gourhan. Great labor has to go into simply struggling against forgetting the previous work of archaeologists in order to forge new and interesting angles on the material past. Even so, many regard this exercise as running counter to that noble dream of a “homegrown brand of archaeological theory”.
Boundaries are expedient and flimsy conceptual tools for understanding disciplinary work in archaeology. As I stated in a previous archaeolog entry: “boundaries are the most futile of classificatory devices for a science (and humanity); as soon as a line is drawn someone will inevitably stray over it and lay claim to new territory”. Whether we think in terms of networks of relation, fluctuating masses or plasma we have so much more to gain from avoiding oversimplifications spawned by images of archaeology as a bounded terrain.
This disciplinary commitment is also tied to “an old and deeply rooted inferiority complex in archaeology of being a second string social science that adds the products of forerunner disciplines and sciences to their accounts of the past (an attitude which is in fact a product of the very rifted regime that these new discourses want to do away with)” (excerpted from “Archaeology: the discipline of things” session abstract).
Along with Michael Shanks and Timothy Webmoor, I co-organized a session entitled “Archaeology: the discipline of things” at this past TAG US that strived to take leave of this attitude; an attitude that insults archaeology (follow this link for an exciting line-up of papers http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/Metamedia/3374). It was during the session that Susan Leigh Star pointed out how many of the so-called “secondary” sciences (e.g. education or nursing) are, in fact, sciences of care. This emphasis on care for things, things which are regarded as the material past, is part of our rationale for deploying the subtext “the discipline of things”. Bjørnar Olsen has stated as much extremely well (2003; 2007). There are other reasons for this subtext.
It is no mere quibble to revisit the commitment of archaeology as specified in its etymology, the study of ta archaia, literally translated as “old things”. Indeed, the ontological grounds we now tread upon pose serious questions as to whether “archaeology” as a term allows practitioners to cover the range of associations things conspire within for those of us who seek to address them. Reminding practitioners of our etymological commitment is another aspect of the rhetorical strategy behind “the discipline of things”.
This strategy has absolutely nothing to do with exclusively defining archaeology, a diverse field of practices, sensibilities and relations that spans the humanities and sciences, on the basis of its “object” of study or in opposition to cognate fields such as anthropology. As with the adjective “symmetrical”, we are not tied to the “discipline of things” as a definition for archaeology (Witmore 2007). We err by claiming these terms to carry empirical weight or by proclaiming symmetrical archaeology to be another grand theory. Again, these are simply rhetorical tools for helping us in passing on to much more refreshing and interesting ontological grounds. We are happy to drop them when this passage has occurred.

References
Edgeworth, M. (ed.) 2006: Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice. Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations. AltaMira Press, Lanham, Maryland.
González-Ruibal, A. (ed.) 2007: Arqueología Simétrica. Un Giro Teorico sin Revolucion Paradigmática (with commentary). Complutum, 18:283-319.
Jorge, V.O. and J. Thomas (eds) 2007: Overcoming the Modern Invention of Material Culture. Journal of Iberian Archaeology 9/10.
Knappett, C. and L. Malafouris (eds) 2008: Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach. Springer.
Olsen, B. 2003: Material Culture after Text: Re-Membering Things. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(2), 87-104.
Olsen, B., 2007: Keeping things at arm’s length: a genealogy of asymmetry, World Archaeology 39(4).
Shanks, M., 2007: Symmetrical Archaeology, World Archaeology 39(4).
Webmoor, T. 2007: What about ‘one more turn after the social’ in archaeological reasoning? Taking things seriously’, World Archaeology 39(4), 547–562.
Witmore, C.L. 2007: Symmetrical archaeology: Excerpts of a manifesto. World Archaeology 39(4).